When Ingredients Disappear

Or The Great Sprinkle Vanishing Act!

One afternoon last week I found myself sitting at my desk scouring the internet for bronze-coloured sugar sprinkles. Why? Because the bronze sugar crunch I use to coat one of my most popular truffles is no longer available.

Now, you might think that all of a chocolatier’s ingredients come from specialist trade suppliers but, for tiny artisan businesses like mine, that’s not always the case. I created Goddess, my dark chocolate Cointreau truffle, way back before I’d even started Truffle Witch. At that time, I got most of my ingredients from supermarket shelves. The bronze sugar crunch came from M&S — and, incidentally, contributed to making Goddess one of my most expensive truffles to produce. Now, after 10 years, they no longer sell it. How dare they? Clearly, nobody at M&S stopped to consider the consequences for one small chocolatier in Sussex.

You’d think finding a replacement would be simple. It really isn’t.

A Goddess Scorned

Goddess, as befits her name, is a rather lovely truffle with a very distinctive appearance, so any old bronze-coloured sugar sprinkles simply won’t do. Search the internet and there’s a whole world of beautiful, multi-coloured sprinkles in every imaginable shape, size and even flavour. Unfortunately, none of them is anything like my missing bronze crunch.

All That Glitters

The problem is that most sugar sprinkles are designed for decorating cakes, not coating chocolate truffles. They might look beautiful in the packet, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stick properly to a truffle, stay crunchy, or behave themselves once they’re in contact with chocolate.

Having spent far too long disappearing down a rabbit hole of beautiful sprinkles, I became so entranced by some of them that I began to wish I made cakes instead of chocolates.

Unfortunately, the ingredient vanishing act doesn’t stop with Goddess. The bronze crunch is just one of a number of ingredients that have either disappeared already or are about to.

Last Orders

I used to make a truffle called Rasputin — a white chocolate ganache blended with a mint and white chocolate vodka liqueur. When the bottle was empty, I discovered I couldn’t get any more. Well, not unless I was prepared to pay £40 for a small bottle on eBay to someone who had obviously been hoarding it!

I could have used ordinary vodka and added some mint flavouring, but it wouldn’t have been the same. So poor old Rasputin is now just a tasty memory.

Liqueurs seem particularly prone to vanishing on me. Salamander, a white chocolate truffle made with Fire Eater cinnamon whisky liqueur, is about to go because I can no longer get the liqueur and I’m down to the dregs. Artemis may be heading the same way. I discovered the spiced maple liqueur I use in her at an event years ago, but now I can't find it for sale anywhere. This is one of the hazards of falling in love with unusual ingredients — I create a truffle around them and then, several years later, they have the audacity to disappear!

Any Colour You Like

My rose and violet truffles, Aphrodite and Sorceress, are facing potentially dramatic changes. When I first created them, the truffle powder — the fine cocoa-based coloured powder I use to roll them in — was available in a wide range of colours. It’s quite a niche ingredient and isn’t made in the UK, and the UK supplier now only carries pink and green. Unless I want a violet truffle coated in green powder, that’s not much use to me!

I even contacted the manufacturer directly, only to be told that they supply the UK through Keylink and wouldn’t sell directly to a tiny business like mine. Keylink could order the lilac powder for me, but only in quantities I’d never be able to use before it went out of date.

The Perfect Storm

So why are some of these specialist ingredients becoming harder to get? Well, the double whammy of Covid and Brexit certainly hasn’t helped. Covid seems to have reduced the market, which means less demand for niche ingredients and less reason for suppliers to carry the enormous ranges they once did. Brexit compounded the problem because buying specialist products directly from European suppliers can now be ridiculously expensive for a tiny UK business — sometimes the postage alone can cost more than the ingredient.

Not Coming Up Roses

Sometimes, though, there’s a very good reason for an ingredient disappearing. My supplier recently told me that they’re discontinuing the entire range of crystallised flowers I use because, despite working with the manufacturer, they haven’t been able to get the consistent quality and food-safety assurances they require. That’s something they simply aren’t prepared to compromise on — and I can’t really argue with that.

They’re still searching for a substitute and if they can’t find one, what chance do I have?

Unfortunately, Aphrodite and Sorceress are being clobbered from both directions, because they also have pieces of crystallised rose and violet inside their ganache. It’s not just their appearance that may have to change. More importantly, their taste and texture may have to change too. And those disappearing crystallised flowers are also sprinkled over two of my best-selling products — my rose and violet creams.

Close But No Cigar

Finding something that looks vaguely similar is only the beginning. A replacement has to taste right, look right and behave itself throughout the product's shelf life. That means testing it over time — and one tiny change can have a surprisingly large knock-on effect.

If a liqueur adds sweetness, alcohol and flavour to a ganache, just replacing it with something similar won’t cut it. Take Salamander for example — yes, I could buy any old cinnamon-flavoured whisky but it would be much harsher and less sweet than a cinnamon whisky liqueur.

Purple Reign

I’ve found some gloriously coloured purple sanding sugar that could, potentially, replace the truffle powder coating for Sorceress. But a sugar coating will add sweetness and extra crunch to an already balanced ganache. Then again, it may not stay crunchy at all. It could absorb the moisture from the truffle and dissolve or go sticky after a few days. And then there's Aphrodite and Sorceress as a pair.

If Sorceress suddenly has a sparkly sugar coating while Aphrodite still has her soft pink powder, do they still look as though they belong together? Perhaps Aphrodite needs pink sugar too. Now one unavailable purple powder has caused me to redesign two truffles and a selection. If I change the coating and the ingredients, is it even the same truffle? Maybe it would be easier to retire those truffles altogether.

Now the purple sugar has arrived, it isn't quite as vibrant in real life as it looked online — one of the hazards of trying to source ingredients from photographs.

The Hidden Cost

And once the practical work in the kitchen is finished, there's the admin. New ingredient labels have to be produced, allergen information checked, website and Etsy descriptions changed, and new product photos taken — before someone quite reasonably complains that the truffles they've received don't look like the picture!

And then there’s the cost. A substitute can exist and still not be viable. The lilac truffle powder, for example, is still available — just not in suitable, affordable quantities. For a small business, the question isn’t “Can I buy it?” It’s “Can I buy it in a sensible quantity, at a sensible price, often enough to make the product reliably?”

Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It

And that brings me back to that bronze crunch. Several possible replacements later, I still haven't found one that's quite right.

I’m going to issue a challenge. I need something suitable for coating truffles, not decorating cakes, so it needs to consist of small, fairly flat pieces rather than balls or pearls. Crushing larger pieces of sugar doesn't work — I've tried! It must be copper or bronze in colour, with absolutely no caramel or other added flavour, available in the UK in sensible quantities and, preferably, not ruinously expensive.

If you can find something that passes the test and becomes Goddess's new coating, I’ll send you a box of newly resparkled Goddess truffles as a thank you.

Hurry up! Goddess is getting a bit chilly!